Day 91 - more sweet potatoes, more books and more fun

What is a presidential proclamation and what effect does it have? Today was World Autism Awareness Day ( note the term "world" in the title) and President Trump tweeted today that he had proclaimed today to be exactly that, World Autism Day. As it is also International Fact Checking Day I took it upon myself to find out whether this is the first such occurrence of the day or whether it is a well established event. According to Wikipedia (is there any higher court?) it is a United Nations backed event, proposed by Qatar and was adopted in December 2007. It has taken place every 2 April since so my question is whether a presidential proclamation does anything or is it like saying "I declare these games open? Trump aside there was plenty about Autism on social media and hopefully it will help people to understand the condition better. My own appreciation was like most people's limited to having seen Rain Man. There was also a TV program about it this week showing that not all autistic people show characteristics. I didn't do anything specific with regards to the event other than using it to check a fact. If I'd k own about the "Light It Up Blue" campaign then I'd have worn more blue.  As it happens I was wearing blue but only out of luck rather than effort. I don't think that counts.

It was also Sweet Potato Day today, again. Another chance to check facts as the two main websites I use can't agree on when Sweet Potato Day is. Feb 22 was, I'm sure that you'll recall,  Cook A Sweet Potato Day.  I made a big thing about the need to cook it as a say to celebrate. The website gone-ta-pott.com however states that Sweet Potato Day is the first Monday in April AKA today. As I quite like sweet potatoes I'm happy to celebrate twice. We had a sweet potato and turkey mince chilli. It was overcooked  but edible.  It wasn't as nice as the sweet potato and bean chilli I made in February, maybe it was due to the meat part. Hmm.

For Childrens Book Day I read An Oliver Jeffers book about catching a star to my youngest. She enjoyed it as she usually likes anything with stars in. We also had Barry The Fish With Fingers and at bedtime a Blue Kangaroo book. There are so many good kids books out there but I expect anyone with children will be fully aware of that. Oliver Jeffers is a favourite as they're quite quirky. "Stuck" is certainly worth a read. They are quite short so I thought about trying to write one myself, it's much harder than it sounds and the temptation is always to go straight in with fart jokes. If your going to take that route then it needs to be different, if the parents don't like them then they won't read them to the children.

Lastly today I'll tell you about my first celebration this morning. It was Peanut Butter And Jelly Day so I had it on toast for second breakfast. In America they usually use grape jam (or jelly if you must) but that isn't a big seller here in England so strawberry it was. I never used to like the idea of the two together but since being converted some years ago I've never looked back. They're a match made in heaven. As it is Fact Checking Day, it wasn't actually made in heaven but rather the first recorded mention of a PB&J was in 1901 by Julia Davis Chandler (although seriouseats.com doesn't specifically say where). I was going to make a PB&J eggy bread sandwich for pudding today but I ran out of time and we only have olive oil in the house at the moment. It'll have to keep for another day. Make the sandwich, dip it in egg, deep fry and roll in castor sugar.  Eat hot with ice cream. Yum.

Hopefully I'll have time to make chocolate mousse tomorrow to take away the taste of eating fish fingers with custard!